What Did You Do Today 2025

[DiogenesParticipant @diogenes]

Slowly making progress, bit of handwork & finishing left to do –

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, yesterday evening I finished a world map puzzle, which was very puzzling, I’ve had this puzzle for many years, along with a similar one. I started doing it a couple of weeks ago, and doing a bit each day, as there are 1000+ pieces to it, however, although there are enough pieces to complete it, the last four pieces do not fit in any of the blank parts that can be seen. All the pieces were in a sealed poly bag, which didn’t have any splits or holes in it, and the box was also wrapped in thin polythene, so nothing could have fallen out. There are several pieces that are similar shapes, but these four pieces don’t match any of the other pieces as far as shape goes, so in effect, this is a puzzle that can never be completed, save making some replacement pieces by hand, which I don’t fancy doing.

Regards Nick.

[DurhambuilderParticipant @durhambuilder]

Could be a few wrong elsewhere? Try swapping a few around.Big gaps and colour mismatch in the Pacific Ocean

[DiogenesParticipant @diogenes]

El Nino, it does funny things to the currents..

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Durhambuilder, there are a lot of gaps, some bigger than others, and some of the holes and pegs are not quite the right shape, but what doesn’t show up in the big picture is the blue lines that run both down and across the map, and so these have to line up whatever gap there is, and so cannot be swapped around anywhere else. The colour mismatch is just down to the lighting in the room, and no mismatch can be seen by eye under good light.

I can’t remember where or what they cost, but I think they were a budget kind of price.

Regards Nick.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, with respect to my jigsaw conundrum and persuing Durhambuilder’s suggestion that a few could be in the wrong place, I spent a good while looking at all the blue areas that didn’t have any writing or parts of the map, and I found one piece which didn’t have one of the blue lines on, that should have had one, Now one of the pieces I had left over, does have a blue line on it, so I swapped them, and found that a piece beside it was to small, and lo and behold, one of the other left over pieces was the same shape and just that little bit bigger and fitted just right, close by these two that were wrong, I noticed another piece that didn’t quite look right, so I took that out, and a third one that was left over was much the same size and shape, which fitted exactly in that place, and the one that was wrong, fitted into the the blank space on the right, That then left me with  three pieces, and so with a bit of head scratching, I realised that the triangular looking one in the other three places, needed to be rotated 180 degrees, and go upwards one notch and the remaining three pieces completed the puzzle.

I was going to wait until my 13 year old Granddaughter came round, as she is good with puzzles, and her eyes are better than mine, but I got there in the end.

Regards Nick.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Set out to modify my steam-wagon’s crankshaft a little – simply to shave off a bit of weight and tiddly-fy it a bit (what, for an enclosed engine?)

Only…

Ever had one of those days when to do A you find you first need do B then alter C, then… where B etc are not actually part of A’s own project ?

1) Swap the boring-table for the standard top-slide on the Harrison L5 lathe.

The machine is designed to allow very easy exchanging from the back, but the workshop wall is in the way so I need work from the front, entailing dismantling the handwheel and dial assembly.

 

2) Mount the collet-chuck and use a piece of old machine-shaft to set the steady diameter. Then discover the steady won’t fit between the rear “ears” of the saddle. Though for a similar-size lathe it is not an original Harrison fitting and I had had to modify the Vee-groove in it to make it fit the ways in the first place.

So an interesting challenge in setting it up on the mill to narrow its foot by five-sixteenths of an inch. I bolted it to a big angle-box, with a added alignment supports.

 

3) Actually start on the crankshaft itself. By the time I stopped for tea I had thinned and bevelled one over-thick web to a more decent form.

 

One plus for this lathe as well as power feeds in both directions, is that the top-slide can be set to very large angles from the axis, beyond the 50º end of the engraved scale. Modifying its own handwheel and dial to clear those of the cross-slide could allow swinging it round by well over 90º.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Finished those crankshaft tweaks, deburred it, gave the steel a general cleaning-up, wiped it over with petroleum-jelly.

It’s now on the side-table in the dining-room along with other engine bits.

I won’t need modify its drawing as I’ve only altered it cosmetically.

Next, is to detail design its three main bearings and the base-plate that will carry them. So far they exist as Alibre models in simplified ways so I can assess their details. It’s a peculiar way to build an engine: make umpteen bits over far-too-long then start designing the machine more thoroughly by measuring and drawing those completed bits. Which is partly why the connecting-rods now are Version Three, of different centre-distances!

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Well, all right, yesterday (Saturday).

Last day afore Christmas at the Weymouth society’s site.

A chilly breeze but bright sunshine, allowing two or three members to use the raised 32mm / 45mm gauge ovals, two youngsters – yes our club does have such – to run lap after lap on the ground-level line with a 7¼” g. “Tich” and a 5″ g. “Sweet Pea”; while others carried out some servicing on the club’s “Wren” loco and other assets.

Weeding the track, I rather wished it possible to tell the wild plants they are supposed to be asleep for the Winter.

 

As well as collective tea-drinking and mince-pies eating, of course – in one break I found myself nudging another member to sampling the forthcoming Alibre Atom trial in the magazine, showing examples in a previous edition someone had left on the club-room table.

That “Tich” had been bought I think unused, from another member who appears to have left the hobby. He had built it to a very high standard, but it would not go – he had simply forgotten to pin one of the Walschaerts Valve-gear’s return-cranks, so it had slipped. Tracing and correcting that had been something of a team effort, and now the engine was lapping the circuit with a style more suited to an LNER Ax than a dockyard shunter! Safety-valves lifting on the long uphill straight, too.

 

And thus the last of us closed and locked up yesterday afternoon, wishing …

….. Happy Christmas To One And All!

 

[DiogenesParticipant @diogenes]

..today I failed to find any of my thread-pitch gauges; which means of course, that at some point I must have collected them all together and put them in some ‘safe’ place where they will all be conveniently to hand..

..if only I had any recollection of where that might have been..

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